


La Vie En Rose

by Themadwomanwhoisunfortunatelylackingabox



Series: Playground Hearts [1]
Category: Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Enemies to Lovers, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Overuse of italics, Treville and Richelieu are Elementary School Teachers, like really intense italics overuse this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 09:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4955317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Themadwomanwhoisunfortunatelylackingabox/pseuds/Themadwomanwhoisunfortunatelylackingabox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean Treville was not going to his high school reunion, and he was definitely not going without a date.</p><p>(AKA, the one time Adele's dating advice turns out for the better)</p>
            </blockquote>





	La Vie En Rose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kyele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyele/gifts).



“I’m not going.”

Slight static crackled at the end of the line. _“Like hell you aren’t going, Jean. I did not do all those things for you in high school for you to back out on me now.”_

“Adele, I am a barely tenured elementary school teacher. I’m not going.”

_“If you don’t, I’ll give Charlotte those old pictures---”_

“You wouldn’t.”

 _“I would._ ” And she actually would, damn it. He knew her.

“I’m not going.”

_“Do you remember that time in the ninth grade---”_

“---Fine, fine. I’ll go.” He said. “But you owe me one.”

 _“Please. I’m just cashing in on everything you owe me_ ,” she scoffed.

Yeah, right. Just because her wife---- fuck. Her wife. “I don’t even have a date.” He said. “You are not going to make me the only single person there.”

 _“I’m certain Charlotte knows someone,_ ” she said. _“In fact, she was just telling me the other day about a colleague of hers…”_

“My boss is not going to set me up on a date, Adele.”

_“Hear me out! Charlotte says this guy is smart, attractive, likes literature and all that pizazz you’re into---”_

“I’ll find my own date.” He said, even though he hadn’t had a relationship since the army, and that one didn’t end well.

He could find himself a date.

 

He couldn’t find himself a date. This wasn’t his fault. It was the school district’s. It was every single school district combined, because honestly, who had school reunions on finals week. Who. It was a plot against him, he was sure of it, because there was only one person he knew who was free then.

And he sure as hell was not going with _Armand Richelieu_. That pretentious bastard could keep his vacation days, Treville didn’t need him. His ridiculous curly hair aside, he was a Shakespeare junkie, and Treville dealt with far too much of that when he was getting his degree. If he heard another word about Hamlet he might strangle someone. That someone was going to be Richelieu.

“Alright kids, I know Mr. Richelieu’s class went with Shakespeare as their writer, but---” _Since I disagree with Richelieu on his relevance, especially to ten year olds,_ “---We are going to go with Alexandre Dumas instead.”

“Dumas?” He could hear Richelieu guffaw from across the library.

“You may know Dumas from his story _The Three Musketeers_ \---”

“The Three musketeers? Like, all for one and one for all?”

“Yes, Marie, exactly like that.” _Good luck on getting the kids to recognize To Be Or Not To Be, Richelieu._ “Alexandre Dumas was born in 1802…”

 

_“So have you found anyone yet?”_

He should lie. “Not yet,” he said instead. Damn it.

_“Jean, it’s in a week.”_

“I know, I’ll find someone.”

_“Charlotte does still know this guy, Jean. He owes her some favors…”_

“I’ll find someone.”

_“I’ve met him, he’s practically perfect for you!”_

“Your ideas of perfect for me and my ideas of perfect for me are very different things.”

_“Psh, no they aren’t. When have I ever led you astray?”_

“Only with Alex, Jim, George, and don’t  forget when you thought I was straight.”

_“That’s not fair. You hadn’t told me, and we were fifteen!”_

“And you tried to set me up with at least as many girls.”

_“Semantics.”_

He sighed, leaning against his desk. “Maybe I should just go alone.”

 _“What? No, Jean, you can’t go alone---”_ She was a bit too rushed. Damn it, what did she do now?

“Adele, what did you do.”

_“Nothing!”_

“Adele.”

She blurted out a stream of incomprehensible words.

“Slower, Adele.”

_“I may or may not have told your mother you’re engaged?”_

“What.”

_“What was I supposed to do, Jean! She was crying and moaning about how you were going to live alone forever and that she was never going to have grandchildren---”_

“So you decided to tell her I was engaged?” He said. “She’s going to hate me because I didn’t tell her, then she’s going to cry when she figures out it’s a ruse---”

_“So don’t let her figure it out! Look, you’ll get a date, go home, pretend to be engaged, go back, and pretend he cheated on you and you never want to hear about him again. Easy.”_

He was going to kill her. He was going to rip out every organ in her body, he swore to god---

_“But I’ve been trying to tell you, I’ve found you a date that says he’ll pretend; apparently he owed Charlotte a ton of favors?”_

He hung up without saying anything, despite the half-finished _“Jean---!”_ from the other end of the line. Sometimes he wished he had never met her, back in the third grade with paper mache gluing her hands together. Ever since they met she had always been like this: nosey as hell, trying to set him up on dates he didn’t need, tying him up in plots that always ended up hurting him more than they helped.

It was like whenever she saw something she had to go and mess with it. No matter what it was. No matter if it had been perfectly fine alone. He had liked quietly creating lesson plans while some rerun of a crime show played in the background. He enjoyed being around ten year olds ninety percent of the time. Yet whenever Adele was involved, it turned into this; searching around frantically for a date because somehow his mother was told he was engaged.

But no amount of whining over everything Adele did was going to change the situation at hand. Which was either A, give up and take Adele’s blind date; or B, go with the most infuriating person Jean had ever had the misfortune to meet, including the football jocks from high school that used to beat him up every thursday.

Either let Adele have the pleasure of winning, or go crawling asking Armand Richelieu for  a date.

He stared at his phone. _Give in,_ some part of him said. Ask her for the guy’s name at least. But the part that was his pride said _death before dishonor,_ and vowed not to call her.  

Now staring outside of Richelieu’s classroom, he hated himself for that. _It’s not too late_ , he thought weakly. It was too late. He had already made up his mind. There was no calling Adele now, not when he was standing outside of Richelieu’s door, watching him pack up and rehearsing a speech in his mind.

The door opened. “Something the matter, Mr. Treville,” he drawled with an eyebrow raised.

Now or never. “I need a favor.” It killed him to say that, but he did.

Richelieu huffed, leaning against his door. “I’m not grading your reports for you.”

“I can grade my reports myself,” he snapped. “I need. I need a personal favor. What are you doing next weekend?”

A smirk spread across Richelieu’s face. “My dear Mr. Treville, are you asking me out on a date?”

Like Treville would date him if he weren’t forced to. No, Treville didn’t have a thing for smug bastards with blue eyes. But Jean couldn’t say _as if_ and still get him to go, so he simply rolled his eyes.

“Unfortunately, I can’t do anything next weekend.” Richelieu said. “I have plans with a friend.”

Well, if that wasn’t the most vague and probably-not-actually-real excuse Jean had ever heard. Whatever. He didn’t need Richelieu. He didn’t.

At least Armand didn’t know that Jean needed someone to pretend they were engaged to him. Though he was now short his last option. Sighing, he picked up his phone. “Adele, it turns out I’ll need that date after all.”

She was unreasonably happy at that. “You’ll love him, Jean, promise!”

Right.

 

~~~~~

 

He was early. Jean hated being early, far too much time to worry. But traffic had been unexpectedly easily coming down from the city, and now he was stuck in the parking lot of the diner in his hometown where they were supposed to meet.

What if his date got into a car accident and died? What if he was actually ugly? (No, scratch that, Adele was many things but she could tell when someone was hot.) What if his mother didn’t like him? What if he was a pretentious douche? What if---dear lord, Jean hoped not---he was one of those people who viewed Shakespeare as their Lord and Savior?

No, that wouldn’t happen.  Adele had to have some sort of taste. A blue Ford pulled into the parking lot. His heart jumped. Was it---? No. It turned out to be a suburban mother of three, bringing her kids out to eat. Disappointing.

He checked his watch again. 3:15. Maybe he wasn’t going to show? He could always tell his mother that his fiance was tragically run over by a car, or he found him in a compromising position with a female colleague.

Another car rolled into the lot. Silver this time, just a little beat up around the edges---

Oh fuck, he knew that car. He had seen it a hundred times before: stealing his parking spot, in front of him in traffic, escaping the parking lot after work.

That was Richelieu’s car.

This was alright, he reasoned with himself. Obviously Richelieu had some perfectly legitimate excuse to be a couple dozen miles away from their city. A perfectly legitimate excuse that had nothing to do with Treville. Maybe he was someone else’s date.

Because obviously Richelieu would know literally anyone from Treville’s high school. Obviously.

Richelieu pulled into a parking spot, parking inhumanly straight as always, and stepped out of the car with the stupid grace which defined him. If Treville had doubted it was Richelieu before, he certainly didn’t now.

“ _Treville?”_

Oh fuck, he saw him. “Richelieu.” he said. “What the hell are you doing here.”

“What am I doing here? What are you doing here?”

“I’m waiting for someone.”

“Funny, I’m waiting for someone too.” Richelieu said, then recognition flitted across his face. He sighed, hands sliding down his face. “ _You’re_ Adele’s friend who needed a date to his high school reunion?”

“And you’re Charlotte’s friend that they’ve been trying to set me up with.”

“Well,” Richelieu stared at him, eyes flicking upwards, then downwards. If Treville didn’t know better, he’d say he was checking him out. Since this was Richelieu, he was probably searching out his weaknesses. “I’m sure we’ll survive somehow.”

 

~~~~

The Trevilles lived in an neighborhood in suburbia that was neither a good neighborhood or a bad neighborhood. It just was. Richelieu, that pretentious bastard, probably grew up in one of those neighborhoods that had more white suburban mothers kicking up a fuss at everything than there were things to kick up a fuss about.

The steps to Treville’s porch creaked when he stepped too far to the right, and the house hadn’t been repainted since his father died years ago, but it was home. Richelieu seemed to respect that at least, taking care to avoid the flowers that protruded from nearly every surface. Which was a good thing, too, because if his mother caught him stepping on her hydrangeas she’d probably kill him before Jean had the chance to say _fiancé_. Now that he thought about it, that wasn’t all too bad. Richelieu would have been gone and Treille would have been free to live the rest of his days in peace.

Unfortunately, Richelieu was too nice. Well, there was plenty of time for Jean’s mother to hate him. Jean knocked on the door. Almost immediately the door swung open. Unsurprising, she’d probably been waiting for him. Hell, she’d probably have been waiting since Adele told her he was engaged.

“Jean!” His mother was a woman of unassuming stature, but her hugs could squeeze the life out of him, and though she  was straight out of the nineteen fifties in style of dress, she was not in temperment. Her hair was not the color of steel for no reason.

Unfortunately, this proclivity for hatred did not extend toward anything to do with Jean, or his supposed husband-to-be. In fact, she turned positively tender. It was unfortunate. “And you must be Armand. Ella tells me so much about you. Of course, _only_ Ella has told me about you. Can you believe it? My own son, not telling me he was engaged?” Which of course lead to a glare with the might of god behind it.

“I believe he wanted to surprise you,” Richelieu said smoothly, as she released his lungs from her python arms. “This isn’t exactly the sort of thing you say over the phone.”

“Quite right,” she hummed, leading them inside. “You got a romantic one, didn’t you Jean?”

“What?”

“Well, I know you would have said it over the phone. It must have been Armand that insisted you do it in person.”

“I can be romantic,”

“I’m certain you can, darling.” His mother just waved him off. “You just don’t tend to show it. Now Armand, Adele says you teach?”

“In the same building as your son.” Richelieu smiled winningly. That wasn’t fair. “Same grade, too.”

She chuckled. “Oh yes, the fifth grade. I remember when Jean was that age, you know.”

“Oh, do go on.” He practically purred, a hand wrapping around Treville’s waist, and leaning forwards. “Jean never tells me about his childhood.”

Jean.  A hand around his waist. He stiffened, the hand slid off as if it had never been there. But they would have to be affectionate, wouldn’t they? Later, at the reunion, they would. They were supposed to be engaged. They couldn’t act like they hated each other.

“Oh, I doubt he’d want to.” His mother continued, oblivious to their going ons. “Not much to tell, really. Apart from running around with Adele everywhere, all there’s to talk about is that horrible Rochefort boy---”

“---Mother!”

“Dear, he’s marrying you, he’s going to have to learn sometime…”

“George Rochefort has no business being brought up ever.”

“Now you’re just being overdramatic, Jean.” She tisked. “I do hope your adopted children don’t end up getting that from you.”

“Mama!” He cried, at the same time Richelieu smoothly replied with,

“We haven’t discussed children yet.”

“You should, you know,” She said, “You’re getting married, children are a big part of that.”

“Not necessarily,” Jean protested.

“Well, no,” she said, “but I do want grandchildren someday, Jean.”

“We simply aren’t ready for the responsibilities children entail yet, Mrs. Treville,” Richelieu reassured her. “I’m sure we’ll more seriously consider possible children once we’re more financially stable.”

“Oh, smart and romantic. Jean, you better marry this one, or I’m keeping him.”

“Mrs. Treville---” Red tinged Richelieu’s cheeks.

“Call me Joanna, please.” She hummed. “Which reminds me, would you like some cookies, Armand? I wasn’t sure what kind you liked so I made a bit of each…”

Multiple different types of cookies. His mother insisting that Richelieu call her by her first name. Bringing up Rochefort. None of this was going the way Treville hoped it would. Richelieu was too charismatic.

The clock chimed five. “We better go, mama, we can’t be late.”

“I suppose not.” She sighed, drawing him in for a hug and a kiss upon his cheek. She did the same with Armand, and then they were out the door. “Come visit again soon. Don’t wait until the wedding to visit your mama, Jean.”

 

The reunion itself was something out of Jean’s worst nightmares. Music from the eighties poured out of cheap speakers, Richelieu was at his side, and he was surrounded by people he spent four years of his life hating. Some bored looking blonde he knew from his junior year gave him a name tag, and they were herded into the gymnasium with hardly a word.

The first hour or so went by peacefully; it was just dinner and vague conversation with some old acquaintances Jean recognized from his classes. It would have been bearable, had it not been for the steady weight of Richelieu’s hand on his waist, but it was not nearly as heavy a burden to bear as it had been this morning. It got easier to lie about calling Richelieu his fiance when he didn’t have to lie to his mother, Jean supposed. He wasn’t sure whether or not that was a good thing.

Even pushed out onto the dancefloor by Eliza from his tenth grade math class, it wasn’t too bad. Armand wasn’t a terrible dancer, or at least not bad at slowly swaying to Take My Breath Away. He smelled faintly of red wine and soap, and he was warm, pressed up against him. No, it wasn’t too bad dancing with Armand.

He was suddenly struck by the need to see how Armand would dance to other songs, to less dignified songs; if he had ever bopped along to Cyndi Lauper, if he could even dance at all.

“Jean!” Someone grabbed at his arm. He pulled away from Armand. It was Adele.

“What is it?”

“Look, I didn’t want to bother you, but.” she bit at her lip, pulling him out of earshot of Richelieu.  “George Rochefort is here.”

“Rochefort is here?” No. No way. He pulled away from her.

“Where are you going?”

“I said I’d go to my highschool reunion, Adele, not that I’d spend hours trapped in the same room as the person who made four years of my life hell.”

“Jean, wait, at least tell Armand where you’re going---”

He backed into something. His breath caught in his chest. He didn’t need to see who it was to know who it was.

“Well, well, well,” he said, low and slick like some James Bond villain. “If it isn’t Johnny Treville.”

“Rochefort.”

He still looked so close to the same as he did in high school, blond hair and white teeth and blue eyes, like something Hitler would dream up. “You know, I didn’t think you’d go to one of these, Johnny.”

 _It’s Jean_ , a beleaguered teenager shouted in the back of his mind, and was rewarded with “friendly” punches. “I would’ve thought you would be too busy in a correctional facility to make it, either.”

“Too funny, Johnny-boy, too funny. How is...whatever it is you’re doing these days?

“Teaching.”

“Oh, right. _Teaching_.” He said teaching like Treville’s students might say _broccoli_. “Ah, well, we can’t all be lawyers, now can we.”

Treville could kill him. Could smear his blood all over his Prada shoes and expensive suit. He’d plead insanity, he’d never get convicted.

Then Richelieu came back. “Jean, darling, I brought you some punch,”

He hoped to god someone spiked it. “Thanks.”

“So it is true, then.” Rochefort drawled. “Well, we always did think you were a queer, eh?”

Richelieu stiffened beside him, his eyes went cold. “What?”

“Well you  are, aren’t you? Queer. I was right all along.”

“So you were right. So you managed to predict the sexual preferences of a sixteen-year-old boy, so what.” Richelieu loomed over him, tall and imposing. “What was it all for? You get nothing in life from making his life miserable, and you never have. Perhaps that’s why you do it. You have nothing better to do with your life, and thus attempt to bring him down with you. I almost pity you. “

“I don't need your _pity_ \---” Rochefort snarled.

“No, you do. Because even years later, you still can’t see how much of an idiot you are. Because straight ahead of you is one of the most kind and considerate men I have ever had the fortune of meeting, and you still can’t see past his sexuality. His sexuality, which is just as legitimate as your misplaced love in women, seeing as I hope you’ll never have the chance to find anyone who can actually love your stunted, black heart.

“Certainly no one will ever love you the way I do that man standing in front of you, because no one could ever, nor would ever, because no one who could find it in themselves to love a creature such as you would ever  be able to love so wholly that nothing could ever stop it.” He finished, quietly but certainly not dispassionately.  His eyes were dark, unsympathetic, and filled with partially-concealed rage. “And his name is Jean.”

“Let’s go, Armand.” Treville took his arm and left the hell hole of his youth behind them.

It hardly even registered in his head what happened until they were outside, until they were safely away from anyone else Treville had ever known. Then, stopped under the streetlight in the godforsaken parking lot, searching for Richelieu’s car, did he finally realize, did he finally think. “Richelieu---” he said, catching his arm at the elbow and staring at him straight in the eye.

That was a bad move, he realized, when Richelieu pulled closer to him, when neither of them could bring themselves to tear their eyes away from the other.

They didn’t kiss. They wouldn’t. It didn’t matter that Armand had just fought off all of Jean’s childhood bullies in a feat of heroics that would have starred in a sixteen year old Jean’s daydreams. It didn’t matter that Armand was hardly inches away. None of that mattered.

To kiss Armand now wouldn’t be playing pretend. To kiss him now was to kiss Armand Richelieu as Jean Treville; it was to kiss without any reason to other than that they were so close, and his eyes were so blue. Now, they had no one to impress and no one else there. Now it was just them both silently staring at the other.

“Treville,” he murmured, but even that didn’t break the spell that had settled over the both of them. They didn’t kiss. They didn’t dare to. Not now, not like this. Not alone, in the dull light from the lamp-post. They couldn’t kiss like this. Kisses like this were reserved for people who were actually in love; for cheesy romcoms and for Charlotte and Adele. They were neither. They were a mismatched pair of elementary school teachers who hardly even liked each other before this.

Richelieu took his hand, traced this scar on the inside of his wrist with his fingertips. It felt like they could stay like this for an age,  in this limbo where they were so close but yet so far. “Jean,” he said, and it shouldn’t have sounded so foreign on his lips, like he had never said it before. He had spent the entire night calling him Jean, to people who never mattered to him and never would. He had never said it to Jean himself.

He looked good in the dull golden glow of the streetlight, regal almost. Like Hamlet, if Jean was as prone to Shakespeare metaphors as Armand was. Hamlet staring at Ophelia, before his life came crashing down.

But that was just it, wasn’t it? Life would always come crashing back. He didn’t love Richelieu. Richelieu didn’t love him. They just thought they did, because Richelieu acted sweet and Treville hadn’t had a relationship in years. This was nothing more than his lonely mind reaching out and grasping at the first possibility of affection it saw. There was nothing between him and Richelieu. There never would be.

He pulled his hand away.

 

Life went on. Of course it did. They went back to the city, back to their classrooms, back to life. Treville went back to papers and spelling tests and tried to pretend. Richelieu was nothing more to him than his colleague across the hall. Of course he wasn’t.

But finals week turned to the final week of school, and while his students grew more restless, the sticky-hot June air just made him tired.

He and Richelieu hadn’t spoken since that night. They hardly even looked at each other. That was alright, he told himself. They had no reason to. It didn’t matter what Richelieu was doing across the hall. It didn’t matter that they didn’t even make eye contact from the other side of the teacher’s lounge. Why should it?

But it was too quiet. Treville would never admit it, but he almost missed their arguments. Missed fighting with Richelieu about how Dumas was better, _honestly, the representation in his works is way better_ , and Richelieu responding with _don’t even try to tell me that Shakespeare didn’t write fleshed out female characters, Treville. Or have you forgotten about Ophelia, Viola and literally every other character he’s written?_

Maybe Jean did need to get out more, because now he was spending his free time rereading Shakespeare just to see what on earth Richelieu might see in it. The fifth grade kickball tournament was today, and he hadn’t managed to give his kids more than a few weak tokens of encouragement.

He skimmed over the last sentence on the page; lunch time was almost up.

 _Perdition catch my soul, but I do love thee, and when I love thee not, chaos is come again._ Othello. It was that sort of pretentious wrappings of a simple phrase that Richelieu would love. Dumas would have put it simpler, in layman’s terms: _Woman is sacred: the woman one loves is holy._ But maybe he was just overly fond of the Count of Monte Cristo. Maybe Treville was just sick of people never saying what they meant. Maybe Treville was sick of grandiose declarations of love and never talking to him again. Maybe Treville----

“I thought you hated Shakespeare,” Richelieu said, barely louder than a murmur. So, they would pretend like nothing happened. Alright.

“I do. I needed to remember what absolute rubbish it was, after spending so much time with you.”

“You flatter me, Treville. I wouldn’t think my presence would ever encroach upon your hatred of the best literary mind in the English language.”

“Yes, well.” He cleared his throat. “You manage to change a lot of things, Richelieu.”

“Enough to make you read Othello, I see.” He said. _“I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at; I am not what I am.”_

“I’m farther than that, Richelieu.”

“You managed to get past the first scene? Color me impressed.” Sarcasm rolled of his tongue like the concept was created for Richelieu alone. “I’d hope you got past that far, Treville. Where are you, then?” He leaned over Jean’ shoulder to glance at the book. _“My Lord, you know I love you,”_

“I was just with Desdemona, thank you,” he rolled his eyes. “Not quite to that bit where Iago is manipulating him, though Iago’s manipulating him throughout the entire thing.”

“Ah, so Othello is being a romantic fool again.”

“Othello is a romantic fool throughout the entire play, Richelieu. That’s the point of him.”

“I suppose so.” He sighed. “...Treville, I. About last week.”

“Thank you for going with me. What else is there to say?”  
“Nothing.” He swallowed. “Nothing at all. Except, Treville,”

“What is it?”

“I---” He leaned in close, far too close.

They kissed, chaste and sweet. He was warm against him, his hands felt good in his hair. Richelieu had absurdly nice hair. Strangely textured, but not unpleasant. Good to run through.

Then Richelieu was gone, back to a respectable distance away, straightening up while Jean’s mind was still short circuited. “---The Captain of the musketeers was therefore admired, feared, and loved; and this constitutes the zenith of human fortune.”

Treville answered by pulling him down for another kiss, a proper one, with hands in hair and tongues entangling.

 

They were late bringing their kids to the kickball field.

  


(They never meant to tell this to Athos. Adele had different ideas.

“Let me tell you how I orchestrated the romance of a century, young padawan,” she said, before she kidnapped their only child to tell tales of her exploits.)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I've never actually read Othello, or the Count of Monte Cristo, I know I should, but. Life.  
> A big kudos to my twin brother, who read this without even knowing any of the characters were, and also to Bean-about-town because I really needed your infectious excitement. :D
> 
> The title is from the lovely song "La Vie En Rose" which is just so pretty and so nice and, gah. "And When you speak Angels sing from above/ Everyday words seem to turn into love songs" or at least that's the English lyrics, and TRY TELLING ME that's not cute and great for trevilieu. Just try.


End file.
